151. Question Time: Feargal Sharkey on water pollution, drug legalisation, and fishing

Is it too late to save our rivers? How should the government approach drug testing at festivals? Which political journalists were in attendance at George Osborne's wedding? Singer, environmental campaigner, and our next Leading guest Feargal Sharkey steps in for Rory to answer all these questions and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Hello. Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell, and for the first time, I think, without Rory Stewart, who was finally, after 150...

• 1:55Alastair Campbell?

  Discussions between us being beaten by the logistics of travel and he's currently somewhere above the Atlantic, not able to connect. However, Plan B is in my view as good as Plan A. I am not going to record this episode alone, much as I would enjoy asking myself, Rory, do you think it's a good idea to abolish private schools? And Rory's saying yes. Instead, I'm delighted to say that I'm joined by a man who will be our next guest on Leading, Feargal Sharkey.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Alistair, how are you?

• 2:26Alastair Campbell?

  I'm very well. So are you looking forward to be my presenter?

• 2:30Speaker 03

  I have to say that having kind of walked off stages and had opportunities in my life to say those immortal words, goodnight Wembley and the number one records, it all pales into utter significance at this moment. It's the greatest achievement of my life.

• 2:44Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent.

• 2:44Speaker 03

  That briefly I get to deputise for Rory in some kind of abstract kind of way.

• 2:49Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Delighted to be here. Thank you for asking me.

• 2:51Alastair Campbell?

  Pleasure. Well, when we do the leading episode, which will go out on Monday, we're going to do your whole life story, music, politics, punk rock, and above all, for me, this is why you're going to be on leading, your leading role in the campaign against our government and the world. Now, lots and lots will know you for all sorts of different reasons, but we put out a thing this morning saying, if Rory was unavoidably detained and we had to get Feargal Sharkey

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Deputised.

• 3:21Alastair Campbell?

  Off the bench, send us in some of your questions. So can we run through a few?

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Please, please do, please do.

• 3:27Alastair Campbell?

  And then after, we'll have a little break and then we've got some of the general questions that listeners sent in, which you and I can can knock about if you're happy with that. First question, we get some very, very influential, important listeners. Mr. Tim Farron, no less, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Get away.

• 3:44Alastair Campbell?

  Who says, Feargal, if by some fluke you became majority shareholder in one of our water companies, what would you do first and why?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Oh, you see, that's kind of the thing, because I probably at this point in time would not want to be a majority shareholder in a water company.

• 3:59Alastair Campbell?

  But what would you do if you were in their shoes?

• 4:00Speaker 03

  Oh, I would actually just go, you know what, I've made seventy-two billion pounds out of this over the last thirty years. We've left these companies sixty billion pounds in debt. We've absolutely creamed it. We've completely robbed the bill payer. I think these companies can still be profitable. I think we may have to some pain on our way over the next five or six, ten, fifteen years. So I'm just going to swallow hard, I'm going to grin and bear it, and I'm going to hang on, and I'm going to do what I'm told. Because in ten or fifteen years' time, I could end up with a company that's debt-free, with a nice new shiny sewage and water supply system, looking forward to a profitable, successful future.

• 4:41Alastair Campbell?

  Perfect.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Or I could face bankruptcy.

• 4:43Alastair Campbell?

  Hoggie, I'd like to ask Feargal how he began his activism, and where did the interest in health of rivers come from, and if he has a favourite river?

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Uh, favourite rivers, very simple, that'll be the River Itching in Hampshire. It's a chalk stream, there's only two-hundred-and-twenty-five on the entire planet, eighty-five percent of them are here in southern England. And I have to tell you, we are treating them abysmally badly, to the extent that we are decimating every single one of them. In my view, the River Itching is just perfectly formed, and should be the perfect illustration of what we need to try and protect and preserve for future generations.

• 5:19Alastair Campbell?

  And where the interest came from?

• 5:21Speaker 03

  I've always had an interest in fly fishing. I found myself becoming chairman of the oldest fly fishing club in England. Anybody that's bored at this point in time can now turn over and run away screaming. I found myself deciding that I, on behalf of the club that I was chairman of, that I was going to have to go and pick a fight with DEFRA, Thames Water, and the Environment Agency.

• 5:43Alastair Campbell?

  Dr Luke Blazarsjewski, how do we excited to engage local communities to connect with and protect their local rivers, particularly in cities? I'm asking as a long-term campaigner.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  Uh, that one's already there, from my own experience, Alistair, and it was one of the reasons, again, I suspect we'll come back to, I began to realise four or five years This country, and when I say this country, I mean England predominantly and Wales, is peppered with local community groups full of incredibly decent people who for decades, in some part going back thirty years, have been trying to look after and preserve their little local river. They've known it's been failing, they know it's ill, but these people are not entomologists, hydrologists, biodiversity specialists, they're certainly not activists and campaigners. And that was one of the things that motivated me when I realised these decent

• 6:36Speaker 03

  people out there had put their faith in the system and the system took that trust and abused it in the most obscene way possible.

• 6:44Alastair Campbell?

  Zbris, how long will it take to fix the sewage problem? What should I be doing?

• 6:49Speaker 03

  What you can do right now is simply get in touch with your local MP and get in touch with your water company, voice to them your concerns, your outrage, your anger at what's been going on, what's been perpetrated in your name for the last thirty years. That's what's actually driving this forward. And as YouGov recently discovered, as we speak, sixty-nine percent of voters now think the water industry should be nationalised simply because of the sewage scandal and the impact it's been having on our rivers. Raise your voice, that's all I did.

• 7:22Alastair Campbell?

  Neil Ward, all the focus in the national media seems to be on sewage discharges by water companies, but Environment Agency figures suggest agriculture remains the most extensive cause of poor river water quality. What does Virgil think can be done about this?

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Oh, well, listen, that's completely true. And I will happily say that I made a strategic decision two or three years ago, that I could use my resources as one bloke with a mobile phone and a social media account and pick a fight with DEFRA government, the water industry, the Environment Agency, or also pick a fight with the NFU and agriculture. And clearly, I thought that might have been overextending myself. I'm hoping at this point, we have created enough awareness, enough of a beachhead, enough outrage, that we can now use that beachhead to start extending it from sewage and going, oh, by the way, did you know that London is on the cusp of actually running out of water?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Driven by the same greed, failure of regulation, collapse of the water system. And yes, agriculture actually is the biggest polluter in rivers in England. And we do need to have that conversation.

• 8:30Alastair Campbell?

  Elaine Wilson, does he still fish in the River Fochan? And is it clean these days?

• 8:34Speaker 03

  I don't because I don't get back to for people's experience. I had this extraordinary upbringing, a young man, 10, 11, 12 years old. I could get on a bus in the centre of town, Derry, and 20 minutes later, find myself standing on the banks of the River Fochan with a reasonably decent chance of catching a salmon. An extraordinary thing, a fish that has just swum 3,000 miles from the Fochan, out into the North Atlantic, returned to the river it was born in. And there is this 10, 11 year old kid from Derry trying to kind of shout at it and go, would you mind terribly, just biting on the end of this fly and hanging on to it for a small part.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Unfortunately, I'm afraid even Northern Ireland has been blighted by the impact of corporate greed and regulatory failure. The River Fochan is now blighted with what actually turns out to be possibly the biggest illegal dump site in the whole of Western Europe in a place called Maboy. The chemicals and the sludge and slurry from that illegal dumping site is now leaching into the groundwater and beginning to leach into the river. And as the people in my hometown are about to discover, that also supplies the water supply to Derry, the town I grew up in. There's a massive scandal there waiting to explode.

• 9:57Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God, I thought that was going to be one of the nice gentle ones. Well, listen, this has warmed you up pretty well.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. Keep going.

• 10:05Alastair Campbell?

  Take a little break and then we'll come back and you can throw a few at me. But I might throw some of them back.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 10:40Speaker 04

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• 12:15Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  And me, Feargal Sharkey.

• 12:20Alastair Campbell?

  Come on then, Feargal.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Purely because you and I have a mutual friend, I suspect. Incredibly glorious man called Lord Dubbs, who not twenty-four hours ago got up in Parliament and Catherine sent in a question. What do you think of the instruction to paint over cartoon murals in order to make asylum centres for children less welcoming?

• 12:41Alastair Campbell?

  I'll tell you what I think of it. I would love to be in a very small space with Robert Jenrick.

• 12:49Alastair Campbell?

  And genuinely try to find out what has to happen to you as a human being that you think that is in any way justifiable. Especially, I don't know if you know this, Feargal, he's married to a woman who is the daughter of two refugees from the Holocaust. There was another question we got this week, I can't remember who sent it in, but said, what can we do to stop the Home Office's performative cruelty? And that's what it is, it's performative. The idea that there's going to be people in Syria sitting there thinking, oh, I've just seen on the news that there won't be any Mickey Mouse pictures if we go to the reception centre, therefore that will deter me from trying to get there.

• 13:34Alastair Campbell?

  I find it utterly hideous and I suspect you agree.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  And the reason I brought up, for those of you that haven't seen it, you will find the aforementioned Lord Dubs last night challenging the minister in the House of Lords. And for background, Lord Dubs came to this country as a child on the Kinder Transport in 1939. And the minister's response to that one was pathetic. It was astonishingly abrupt and simply saying that government's actual attitude was utilitarian and that these kids did nothing and deserved nothing of comfort and compassion in the difficult circumstances they were in. And on behalf of Lord Dubs, a plague of locust upon all of their houses.

• 14:16Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I assume Rory would have definitely said that, exactly the same way.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Of course he would have. Steve-O, there was a Steve-O in the music industry, I suspect, it's probably not the same man. You both give us like seventeen new book recommendations every week, slight exaggeration, and you clearly inhale books. How often do both of you, and both of you being Rory, I assume, you actually read? And how long in a usual session and at what pace? A book a week, a book a month, etcetera?

• 14:45Alastair Campbell?

  I finished a book last night, the book I mentioned a few days ago called Orkney. And I probably had that on the go for about four days. I try and read a one fiction, one non-fiction at the same time. And they're both at the moment written by Labour MPs. Chris Bryant, actually, they're both non-fiction. Chris Bryant has written a book about the state of our politics called Out of Order, and definitely worth reading. My favourite chapter, is this the worst parliament we've ever had? And he answers yes. And the other one, I'm reading Wes Streeting's book. Wes Streeting has written a really interesting book about his childhood. What about you, Feargal? Are you a big reader?

• 15:22Speaker 03

  I am indeed. And in fact, ironically enough, I've just finished reading a book Rory recommended, which was to do with Protestant culture in Northern Ireland when he was visiting there a month ago.

• 15:32Alastair Campbell?

  So was that the book that Rory recommended, written by Susan Mackay?

• 15:35Speaker 03

  It was. And he was clearly heading up into Northern Ireland, and I can't quite remember the context, but he mentioned the Susan Mackay book, Northern Protestants. And it is clearly, it is just cover to cover, interviews, first-person perspectives of the Protestant community, and how they perceive and view the world, and indeed the last 400 years of Irish history. And as someone who was born and brought up and spent 20 years living in Northern Ireland, brought up as a Catholic with a limited insight into the Protestant community, absolutely highly recommended. Everybody should buy it. And indeed, some of the current political leaders in Northern Ireland would be well advised to share Rory's advice. Get yourself a copy, go and read it. You might learn something.

• 16:18Alastair Campbell?

  Very good advice.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Now, this one, I have a slight kind of personal interest in this one for professional reasons. From Georgina Newton, I am 13 years old and I'm an avid listener to your podcast. Clearly a young lady with remarkably good taste. I'm also read The Week, and have done so since I was nine. Georgina, I think you're nice showing off, my dear. But by the way, big round of applause, well done you. Canada recently decriminalised drug possession, and I was worried about the implications of this if it were to occur in Britain. I have seen the damage drugs cause, and if we taxed and enabled safer recreation drugs and use, and used the profits for rehabilitation, drug safety programmes and tackling crime, would

• 17:03Speaker 03

  this work? Big question.

• 17:05Alastair Campbell?

  It is a big question. And if you'd have asked me that question 20 years ago, I'd definitely have said no. If you'd have asked it me 10 years ago, I'd probably have said no. But I've definitely moved on it, because I think the war on drugs has failed. And I do think that we don't even focus on rehab in the way that we should. Now, what about you? I suspect you have more experience of drugs than I do.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Uh, we see, funnily enough, uh, music industry for the last ten or fifteen years has worked with a number of charities to provide, particularly at the bigger festivals, to provide drug testing facilities. On the simple basis that, you know what, these young people are gonna do this. So you may as well actually provide the security that if they're thinking of doing something, they can actually take it onsite to a charity, to a unit that will actually test and explain to them the purity or what it is they're about to take, and then they can make an informed decision. Do you want to guess which government this year, for the first year in fifteen years, banned the operation of those charities and those clinics onsite? Because these kids are gonna go and do this stuff anyway, whether we like that or not.

• 18:09Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  And you can, as the music industry, live music industry, I think, was trying to lead the way, trying to ensure that if they're gonna do that, make that kind of decision, at least it has been done within some sort of safe space.

• 18:20Alastair Campbell?

  So would you go the whole hog and decriminalize all drugs?

• 18:24Speaker 03

  Uh, you know what, I probably would go quite a long way in that conversation, because you're absolutely right. The war on drugs and invertebrates has failed. And I know some people that used to work professionally in that kind of area, in trying to prevent drugs coming into this country. And I suspect they'd even share that same opinion. At least they do with me on a Friday night down the pub, after three pints of cider. Uh, very last one, I think, uh, Michelle Bennett. After seeing a number of high-profile journalists at Gideon Osborne's wedding, it prompts me to ask about MSN, director's staff, to keep politicians at arm's length, and surely getting too cozy will lead to soft questioning and not properly holding those in power to account.

• 19:05Alastair Campbell?

  What's your view of that?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  Well, the answer's obviously yes.

• 19:09Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I wasn't invited to the wedding.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Well, that makes two of us.

• 19:12Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I don't think it had gone. I did go, I must admit, when, when I worked for Tony Blair, I did go to some weddings that I was there not because I was a close friend. Um, now, whether they're close friends or not, I don't know, but that whole relationship is way too cozy. Um, I was surprised at some of the people who were there. I was very surprised that there's, you probably know, Feargal, this is the most, you're now a co-presenter of the country's number one political podcast. I was surprised to see the presenters of the number two political podcast in the country were there.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  Indeed.

• 19:45Alastair Campbell?

  As was indeed the presenter of the Today Programme, Mr Robinson. I think it does make it harder. I think it does make it harder. Um, and I, I'll tell you the other thing, though, that I find about our media more generally is this, because there, there is an incestuous relationship, there's no doubt about that. Um, and you see it in the way that people weave in and out of jobs. Now, I went from journalism into, into the political side of the fence, but I was never really a proper journalist. I was always a bit of a, I was always the political, the political bit was more important. But I think that the, the socializing, the, the kind of, the, the, the way that they just, they spend, they go on holidays together, they, you know, they just scratch each other's back the whole time. And I, I think it's, um, I think the public have wised up to it a bit.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  My only comment is I also didn't get an invitation. I can only therefore assume that Mr Gideon Osborne is not a fan of the undertones of my solo records, and I'm still dinging with which is the bigger blight, the fact he's not a fan of my music or I never got an invitation to the wedding.

• 20:47Alastair Campbell?

  Did you not know until now that his, his name was not George?

• 20:49Speaker 03

  I had no idea.

• 20:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Absolutely no idea, whatever. But I guess I'll tell all that public school thing and I'm now going to get you started on that again.

• 20:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, because like Rory Stewart, we don't believe in private schools. We think they, they think, we think they're a cause of most of the problems in this country.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Well, I can name one school that seems to be at this moment in time, but we'll park that idea there.

• 21:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, Feargal, it's been an absolute joy having you. I suspect Rory will be a little bit worried, uh, now that he's heard a proper, you know, performer in the role. Uh, but many thanks for joining me.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  Uh, Alistair, it was a pleasure and a delight, and it is something I will carry with me for decades to come.

• 21:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I thoroughly enjoyed having a new co-host for the day, Feargal Sharkey. He's got a lot of oomph in there, and if you want to hear more of that oomph, then you can tune into Leading, where we'll be talking about his whole life and times. And if you can't wait to hear more of Feargal Sharkey, here's a few extracts.

• 21:46Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I guess your character is key to this. You've obviously got a personality that you're driven and if you decide upon something, you go for it. I just want to go right back to the beginning, and you've mentioned Derry a couple of times. You ended up living most of your life in England, but how much of a Northern Irishman do you feel?

• 22:07Speaker 03

  I would listen distinctly because it's what created me. And it is very Freudian, but invariably tell me about your childhood. And in my case, that was quite an interesting childhood. My father was chairman of the Labour Party in Derry when there was such a thing.

• 22:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Do you think, by the way, do you think there should be again?

• 22:25Speaker 03

  Oh, I think there should be. Oh, absolutely. And that's ironically enough when my father passed away, The Irish Times did this quite big obituary. And even in the 1950s, he spent huge amounts of time in this ultimately futile effort of trying to reach out to the Protestant community on the simple basis that everybody needed to bury the hatchet of sectarianism because the industrialists in Northern Ireland were using that division to separate the working classes, to diffuse their ability to make a cohesive, strong argument about pay conditions, holiday pay, maternity pay, housing and everything else. And it was used to exploit the working classes in both communities.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Now, as it turns out, I could argue that my dad was clearly 40 years ahead of his time and trying to make that argument, and he never made the inroads to it. He was also branch secretary of his local union, the Electricians' Union. I'm still traumatised and probably spend years in therapy about being taken as an eight, nine-year-old child to a meeting, a union meeting, and I'm in a room with 400 other men and my father. They're all referring to him as Brother Sharkey. And as a confused eight-year-old, I'm going, who the hell are these people? I've never met any of these. You're not my brother, you're not my uncle, you're not my dad's brother. I have no idea who you are, why you call him my dad Brother Sharkey. The truth is...

• 23:51Speaker 03

  In the Sharkey family, it wasn't my dad was the political powerhouse. Like all good Irish matriarchal families, that would be my mother. My mum was massively motivated about the civil rights movement, massively motivated about trying to preserve the Irish language and culture and the arts, and was friends with people like Brian Frail and Shannon Casey and all kinds of people. And it was my mum who, on the morning of April the 9th, 1969, demanded that the whole family climbed into the car, the dad drove us all to the opposite side of Ireland, whereas a family, we took part in the People's Democracy Civil Rights March

• 24:32Speaker 03

  between Belfast and Dublin, protesting against injustices to the Catholic community in Northern Ireland.

• 24:38Alastair Campbell?

  So you'd have been 12?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  I was 10.

• 24:40Alastair Campbell?

  You were 10 then, okay.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  10, 11.

• 24:41Alastair Campbell?

  Now, just a minute, and just on your names, we know you as Feargal Sharkey. You're actually called Sean Feargal Sharkey.

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Chan.

• 24:49Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, bloody hell, you're called Sean Feargal Sharkey, right? And just tell us who you're named after.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  If anybody knows a song, an Irish song called Shan South Maghao.

• 24:59Alastair Campbell?

  Go on, sing it, sing it.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  I'm afraid not even the Restless Politics podcast can afford that excessively modest fee. Shan South and Feargal O'Handlin were killed attacking a police station in Northern Ireland in January of 1957, a year before I was born. My mother, clearly without the aid of Ultrascan or other aids, clearly decided that if her newborn child was going to be a boy, she was going to name him Shan Feargal in honour of two dead Irish men. Now, what might that tell you about my mother's politics?

• 25:33Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it gives me a fair indication that she wasn't maybe as committed to the Labour Party as your dad. And how do you feel about that?

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Oh, listen, conversely, it's one of those things that I grew up in a household where... It's extraordinary thinking about it and it is incredibly frightening, but I hope it does answer your question. There was nights in my kitchen that the local plumber, the electrician, the housewife, the local poet, the local schoolteacher would discuss bringing down the national government in Northern Ireland. And I watched as a ten, eleven, twelve-year-old child. I watched the local housewife, electrician, plumber, or electrician, schoolteacher bring down the bloody government to Northern Ireland, or play a role in achieving that. So I grew up in a house where, well, anything's possible. The other bit, my mom organised this festival called Fish, that I call them Kill, which

• 26:24Speaker 03

  was all about preserving the Irish language and culture and everything else. So other nights, there'd be people having mad philosophical arguments about the merits and dis stains of how much Seamus Heaney tried to replicate William Butler Yeats, and maybe he should get his own gig together. So when I reflect upon it, you just go, what an extraordinary household and an extraordinary opportunity to grow up in, what an extraordinary life they've led.

• 26:49Alastair Campbell?

  And would you say you share the basic politics of your parents?

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Oh, listen, without exception. There's no way around that whatsoever. And I still have this very simple belief that society has an obligation to protect them.

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  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under seventeen. Not a minute without parent.

• 27:48Speaker 11

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